How Heat Affects Sleep

Knowing the importance of sleep, and with summer quickly approaching, we thought it would be interesting to look at one of the biggest external factors that can affect your quality of sleep: HEAT!

This is probably one of the more crucial factors that affect your sleep, you’ll sleep better and wake up less if your body is cool at night. There are numerous articles out there reminding you that you should keep your bedroom between 65 and 72 degrees at night, but do you know why? Your body has it own heat distribution system which has been linked to your sleep cycles, even the act of lying down can trigger sleepiness as your body starts to redistribute heat. As you sleep your body’s internal temperature drops which is why many scientists believe that keeping the room cool can help trigger this reaction and speed up the sleep cycle.

Logically, if you are able to lower the temperature around your body you will be able to fall asleep faster and sleep deeper. But did you realize that WHAT you’re sleeping on can play a big role in this? Even if you set your thermostat to 65 degrees if you are sleeping on a surface that traps heat near the body you will still toss and turn at night. If you suffer from insomnia or trouble sleeping one of the most non-intrusive and non-pharmaceutical ways to fix this is by sleeping on a proper mattress.

One of the only mattresses that has been proven to help you sleep cool is the Essentia natural memory foam mattress. Essentia’s patented natural memory foam actually wicks heat away from the body and allows it to dissipate through the mattress. This means as you sleep, your body is able to naturally keep its internal temperature lower to allow you get the most of the 8 hours you put in.

Dr. Jace Provo MD, MS, CASQM tested the Essentia mattress in his evaluation of sleep pattern relationship with circadian rhythmic thermoregulation and surface temperature and found that

“The Essentia mattress core provides an effective solution to minimize the impact of temperature affected sleep deprivation. Evidence suggests that a reduction in surface temperature could prevent fluctuations in skin temperature and maximize the total time spent on sleep.”

Apart from the fact that the Essentia mattress has been named the World’s Healthiest Mattress, the way it reacts to heat is one of the big reasons we have chosen to implement them on our campus here in West Palm Beach, Florida.